My brother and I have an on-going Email dialog on many topics, but most especially on religious topics, and the Christian religion in particular. Recently he posed an interesting question. It was the kind of "out of the box" thinking that I love, so I gave his question careful consideration. Here’s his question and my answer.
What would religion look like if we never died? If we had figured out
how to maintain our bodies indefinitely, or put another way, how
important is our mortality in regard to religion?
Where to begin? The fear of death and the non-understanding of death during the millions of years of our evolution into conscious aware human beings is the major cause for the creation of religions. But I sense that you are asking what if we now discover how to live forever, because if we had always lived forever, the world would be a very crowded place and I don't think we would have religions. At least not like the ones we have today. But, if we someday discover how to live forever, we will have the same overcrowding problem, and our religions will again have to change.
Man, the human animal, invented his religions. They have changed and changed, and are still changing as time moves on. We can't conceive of three eyed people, but they tell us we have the makings of a third eye in our heads, which was long since abandoned by the evolutionary process. At least I think read that somewhere. Likewise we also can't conceive of a world without a God. But since the idea of God was created by man, someday we will have no recollection of our current concept of God, just as we have dismissed that third eye. We have a lot of evolution ahead of us, both physical and cultural.
So what will religion look like in the future? Well it will be universal, not multiple and almost tribal as it is now. All people will understand, feel and honor their connection to the Universe from which we came, the planet on which we live, and the Life Force within us that moves everything endlessly forward. That knowledge will cause everyone to get along and appreciate each other, to live in peace and harmony, and to have care, concern and acceptance for everyone else. Remember at that future date we will all be instantly connected to everyone and everything in the entire world through the continued evolution of the Internet. We might even have tails that we use to connect to plants, animals and each other like in the movie Avatar, present day religions are actually a hindrance to this progress, unless they change and embrace the future, rather than holding tightly to the ideas of the past.
This description of religion’s future brings up the question about morality, or the good without God question that is addressed in the book on Humanism that I recently read. Morality is nothing more than doing what is right and proper according to the general standards of society. These standards change over time, so does what is moral. You have to always consider and be aware of what improves rather than tears down, what helps rather than harms another person. We do not need a God to be good. Being good has its own rewards, and being bad brings grief and disaster.
What Matters Most…….is that mankind has a long way to go, and some religions are taking us backwards instead of forward, but some day maybe in a 1,000 years the human race will get there, and look back on 2010 the same way we now look back at the year 1010, or even 1010 BC. Of course, our technology might kill us all before then and poison our world for life of any kind. In that case the Life Force of the Universe will just start over again, either here on earth or somewhere else in the Cosmos. It has all the time there is, we don't.
© 2010 #12 Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467
Fascinating reflection on the future (if that is grammatically and temporally possible). You have a bright outlook, Jim, which leads to the question, how does our outlook color our future? As a “Star Trek” fan, I always admired Gene Rodenberry’s bright outlook. Rodenberry died while “Star Trek The Next Generation” was still being produced. I noticed a definite shift from brighter to darker outlook when Gen was gone.
ReplyDeleteAnother phrase I heard this morning on NPR during a discussion of the upcoming PBS series, “Upstairs, Downstairs.” One commentator said of the script for the drama set in pre WWII England, “We must remember that we know things that the characters do not know – they are not aware that they are living in the past.” The commentator was quoting another writer who said that of humanity – we do not realize that we are living in the past. In other words, as they say hindsight is 20/20.
I hope, Jim, that the future is as bright as you and Gene Rodenberry see it – I also have a sense of optimism that we will make it there and be alright, though there may be dark times between here and there.